Great British Bake Off

For any UK/Ireland folks - the Great British Bake Off is back on BBC 2. First episode was last night and the contestants had 5 hours to complete a tiered 'show stopper' cake from scratch! They had other challenges too, but this I think was the toughest.

I was going to apply to be on it but I haven't tried doing any savoury baking. I think with careful planning and not over stretching the difficulty and amount of decorations a two tier cake in 5 hours wouldn't be too hard.

No, I totally agree that you could get a tiered cake done in 5 hours with careful planning. Some of these guys don't do the careful planning though which always makes me wonder why they go on something like this.

I have moments of thinking about applying but then I think I probably take criticism a bit personally and have a hard time keeping calm as I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist.

Some of the tiered cakes where atrocious too! The two tier chocolate cake with the chocolate truffles you could see through the cake because she didn't cut the dowels right!! And you could see the silver cake board (not the drum, the thin ones!) It looked nice apart from that though...

I love to hate the two presenters, they make me laugh but they grate on my nerves.

I'd employ Rob, not only because he would be a lovely bit of eye candy for my working day, but his knowledge and the baking he does is technically superior to the rest of them. His problem is lack of planning/time management & nervous clumsiness lol! Did you know that (part) of the prize is a place at Peggy Porschen's academy? Great if you are interested in cake decorating, but not so much if you're more interested in real pastry training (like many of the guys are)!

I don't think any of them are standing out as the winner though - they are either swinging between really good & really bad weeks, or just plodding along in the middle of the road!

Too right! Look up silver fox in the dictionary and there is a picture of Paul

I don't think I could work with Rob at all, his approach to everything is so unplanned and disorganised that I would just constantly be worried that he wasn't going to deliver. I'm hoping it is just that he is nervous and stressed but I feel that if he keeps going the way he is going then it would be wrong to keep him in at the expense of others, however the judges ovbiously see something in him and I respect their decision and I can see that they both have their concerns with him so I trust that if he doesn't 'pull up his socks' they will show him the door.

Cookies and macaroons last night. Some really nice looking biscuits going on and some seriously disastrous macaroons!!

I've had lavander cake and *hate* it so I know I wouldn't have liked the lavander cookies, but then I don't like flower flavoured things at all - no rose water, violet creams though I can sometimes be persuaded into a very good quality turkish delight